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Feb 29 2020

# London Grip New Poetry – Spring 2020

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The Spring 2020 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:

* Tanner * Glenn Hubbard * Jock Stein * Tim Cunningham * Joe Balaz * Ben Banyard * Teoti Jardine * Brian Docherty * Frederick Pollack * Jack Collard * Chris Johnson
* Phil Connolly * Jim C Wilson * Carla Scarano * Andrew Shields
* Gordon Wood * Marjory Woodfield * David Cooke * Val Richards
* Ruth Valentine * Alex Josephy * Hilary Hares * James Fountain * Paul Waring
* Nicky Phillips * Paul Stephenson * Norbert Hirschhorn * Carolyn Oulton * Jan Hutchison * Mary Franklin * Stuart Pickford * Cath Drake * Sue Wallace-Shaddad * Susan Utting
*Rosemary Norman * Elizabeth Smither * Clifford Liles

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors. Biographical notes can be found here

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December
A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at LG new poetry Spring 2020

SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Our submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October

Editor’s notes

I am drafting these notes on January 31st 2020 as our submission window is about to close. I already have a good idea of the make-up of the magazine which ranges from the ironically dystopian through the reflective to the quietly regretful. Maybe these moods mirror the insecurities of our readers as they look out upon a time of great political change when some are hoping post-Brexit events will be just a little better than they feared while others are beginning to fear they will turn out worse than they had first hoped…

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And now we turn from the political to the personal. Our last editorial lamented the death of the Darlington poet and editor Joanna Boulter; and in this issue we mourn the loss of four poets with strong London links: Roddy Lumsden, a highly original poet and much-respected tutor and mentor; Hylda Sims, poet musician and tireless organiser of poetry events north and south of the river; Leah Fritz who, 30 years ago, swapped political activism in New York for a new and successful life as a poet in Primrose Hill; and William Oxley, admired not only for his accomplished poetry but also for his role of convivial host over nineteen iterations of the splendid Torbay Poetry Festival. They are all, in their different ways, irreplaceable and will be greatly missed

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
Forward to first poet

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    Tanner: irony upon irony

    you’re just not poetic enough, darling.

    the lefty editor
    the pro-working-class lefty editor,
    he says it’s not proper poetry, darling,
    when you write about the jobcentre
    the shop floor
    and the rabid public you serve

    but how can you write about
    being working class in this country
    without mentioning the jobcentre,
    the shop floor
    or the rabid public?

    your working-class life,
    it’s just not poetic enough
    for the leftie editor, darling …

    you’re confused

    but then you go to work in a shop
    where the self-proclaimed pro-working class
    working class public
    threaten you
    for running out of houmous
    or being the only one serving
    and you think:

    this hypocrisy,
    it’s actually pretty consistent
    both in the literary world
    and the real one

    pretend to be a lefty
    while rejecting your fellow working-class:
    that’s the working-class way!

    so follow their lead,
    carry on writing your unpoetic poems
    about the jobcentre
    and the shop floor,
    slag off
    the rabid working-class public
    you claim to be a part of

    then send them off
    to be rejected
    by the lefty editor

    and in their rejection
    and yours
    you shall belong.

    just not enough
    for the lefty editor, darling.

    Tanner: another election in a small town

    she wanted refunding
    and when you couldn’t do it
    she told you to get
    the manager
    but when you got the manager
    she didn’t say
    anything to him
    about the refund policy
    but she did tell him
    that she thought
    you
    were rude and unhelpful.

    that’s another write-up.
    2 more and you’re out on your arse.

    you saw her in the street.
    she was wearing a red rosette
    yelling at people
    about unemployment.
    about the death of
    working class solidarity.
    about big business.
    companies are too powerful!
    she cried.
    they’re chewing us up
    and spitting us out!
    she cried.

    wonder how that happened.

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    Glenn Hubbard: A Volunteer at Calais Refugee Camp Addresses the Local Chief of Police

    It's not the same, you say, my burning
    down your house and your having
    their tents thrown into bins each morning.

    True. You have somewhere else to stay
    and you will have had an insurance
    policy on that nice chalet.

    Still, it was the best I could do
    to remind you of how it feels
    to stare up at the stars through the pissing rain.

    Every day they defy you by not going away.
    Much like the bloody-minded citizens
    of Calais. They would not give way, either.

    Obstinate buggers, they stuck it out
    for a year and Edward thought
    to make them pay.

    But he thought again and spared
    the brave burghers, moved by the words
    of his wife, Philippa of Hainault.

    Maybe your missus could have a go
    next time you decide
    to order in the demolition squad.

    The town of Calais was besieged by the English for a year following the defeat of the French

    at the Battle of Crecy (1346). When the siege ended, Edward III demanded that six citizens

    present themselves before him to be punished (presumably executed) for the town's obstinacy.

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    Jock Stein: Firelight

    Catch up flickers in the Australian firelight.
    From our antipodean back yard, ghosts
    come home, convict us all, and stab
    their flaming fingers in our faces, leaving
    climate crushed in a coal-black envelope,
    waiting for the seal of history.

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    Tim Cunningham: Lullaby
    (‘God so loved the world. . .’   John 3.16)

    God held Earth in the palm of His hand,
    Earth whose death rattle
    Echoed through the spheres;
    Held it as you might hold
    A sparrow with a broken wing,
    This Earth exhausted of resources,
    Its oxygen spent, every wing broken,
    Never again to spin around the sun.

    Science, that could have fed the hungry
    And cured the blind, was steered off course,
    Its sat-nav speeding towards destruction.
    Chemicals poisoned land, air and sea,
    Fell like snow on the screaming skin of children.

    We were warned.  We had our prophets
    But they were mocked as Jeremiahs,
    Prophets of doom.

    The sea was innocent.
    It was not the sea’s fault that it choked
    On plastic and nuclear waste.

    The rivers were innocent.
    Pollution was not their fault;
    Neither was the fishes’ extinction.

    The forests too were innocent.
    Insatiable logging was not their fault
    Nor global warming’s indiscriminate torch,

    No more than spiked thorn bushes
    Plaited a crown of thorns,
    Or a rugged cross and nails
    Crucified God’s son.
    They too were innocent.

    As the last bird’s aria died away,
    The last faint echo of Eden,
    God cupped Earth in the palm of His hand,
    Rocked it gently as if rocking it to sleep,
    And sang a lullaby softer than Brahms’,
    Like the one Mary sang
    In that stable in Bethlehem,
    Like the one she sang
    At the foot of the cross.

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    Joe Balaz: Pronto Now

    You bettah grab da wheel
    and start reversing backwards

    cause da tipping point
    is right around da bend.

    From wun evidentiary standpoint

    da projected disastrous weather
    dat is beginning to arrive upon da earth

    going fully use
    all of dose greenhouse gases

    to make everybody feel da heat.

    Da petrocapitalists
    are forcing your hand on da griddle

    and making you sit
    on da red hot coils of wun electric stove.

    Moa bettah you scream
    wun scream of protest

    rather den wun scream of agony.

    Focus on dat corporate fat cat
    continually pushing fossil fuels

    wit wun big smile from ear to ear.

    It’s time
    to knock out some oily teeth

    and let moa wind
    and solar energy

    flow through da gaps.

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    Ben Banyard: Planned Obsolescence

    We get through a lot of lightbulbs,
    even the ones which the makers claim
    will last for 15,000 hours.

    Think of all the smartphones we’ve owned,
    batteries which lost power with every charge,
    screens that cracked, updates too big to download.

    Washing machines, kettles, toasters
    that conked out after a couple of years,
    cartridges dearer than the printers themselves.

    All of it engineered to fail or seem antiquated,
    not made to last, heirloomed to the grandchildren
    but heaped into landfill, guarded by seagulls.

    Much like the planet, it must be said.
    We are its rogue components, saboteurs
    flaming the ice caps, coughing lumps out of the ozone.

    Perhaps everything will fail one day;
    scientists and engineers will smile and shrug,
    admit that it was always built to spill.

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    Teoti Jardine: And No, I Didn’t Ask For Line Maintenance

    The bill arrives, I phone and listen to mind
    numbing excuses for music because my
    call to my internet provider is, as they keep
    telling me, of the utmost importance

    to them, or the Power Company,
    Tax Department, M.S.D., Post Office,
    Bank, Health Centre, or heaven forbid
    should I one day call 111.

    Then a human or, mind now numbed,
    perhaps an interactive human
    sounding device, finally answers the
    phone call I’d made years ago.

    This voice wraps apologies around me
    as I give it, my date of birth and
    where it happened, Mother’s
    maiden name, the size of my cock.

    Then, my dam of issues flood out
    greeted by, ‘I sees, and yes’ and
    many more apologies. ‘Thank you
    for calling, it’s all sorted, have a good day.’

    And I wish he, she or it a good day too,
    astonished at how my feelings of frustration
    have somehow been replaced by a
    post coital sense of intimacy.

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    Brian Docherty: Distractions
    (after Christina Feldman & Jack Kornfeld, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart)

    There are too many of those in the world.
    Not just things, or music, art or movies.

    It is not enough to turn the TV off,
    or put our laptops or phones away,

    or stop buying newspapers or magazines,
    as if not paying attention to events is enough.

    If the world changes around us,
    and we have not noticed or are indifferent,

    what good is that? If you are looking
    for Enlightenment, where will you find it?

    If I had that answer, I would ask you
    to buy my book that will tell you how,

    but maybe that book, if I have written it,
    and not been distracted by Poirot repeats,

    is just another distraction, just a few more
    words to add to the mind’s chatter.

    If I said All you need is a pure heart
    and an empty mind, would you believe me?

    If I said All you need is Love, or All you need
    is cash, could you believe both or neither?

    To be present in the Now, but remember
    to pay the utility bills, is that a paradox?

    To love someone wholeheartedly, but
    let them go their own way, can you do that?

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***

    Frederick Pollack: Who Was That Masked Man?

    The Native American
    helps. Grudgingly. He questions whether
    his marginal social status
    is also ontological.
    Do his considerable talents
    mean anything outside his ancestral
    Lebenswelt? Does he?
    He tries to explain to the farmers
    and ranchers willy-nilly
    involved in an adventure that
    eventually both sectors
    will be vertically integrated
    in immense trusts with many fewer
    employees. Before that happens,
    small farms will blow away because of
    bad practices. They listen to him
    as if to wind. He would do much better
    rescuing threatened widows
    than his principal, but leaves it to him,
    alert to racist body-contact prejudice.

    The boss mostly drinks.
    The Injun reins him in but not by much.
    Determined like many drunks
    to prove he’s unimpaired,
    he’s deadly on the draw;
    and although he makes a show
    of stern regret and impassivity,
    he lives for those blown brains and bloody trunks.

    Otherwise, he cares for his horse.
    Whitewashed, its body sagebrush,
    carefully woven,
    plaited with strips of pine
    and madrone, eyes turquoise, tail and mane
    shreds of a dress;
    subtly, obsessively worked in, the star of the Law.
    Vegetable glues. Composed of what it eats,
    on a good day it can do three miles.
    In his depths, the Ranger too is troubled:
    can it be outsider art if he knows it is?

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    Jack Collard: Double tap X

    The great game begins. The loading screen, a blueprint map stained by
    X`s – 1 life left. No resurrections, no pause no time to think or feel or
    breathe. We`ve been here before. This won`t be the first or
    last time. But one game`s end is another`s
    beginning. Can`t be long till the next one`s unveiled anyway.
    That`s right, you saw it on the news. Can`t wait.

    It`s gonna be great. Your nervous anticipation bleeds into the familiar
    contour of the black plastic placed in your hands, scorched by sweaty finger marks.
    Fingers on triggers, the X buttons, twitching and itching to pinch.
    You know the routine like the scars that snake down your back.
    Dance, boy, dance for your life. Show `em what you`re capable of.

    And we`re off. With rope wrapped round your body you drop down
    down from the sky into the arena through the confetti
    dust. Once on the gravel you pound the triggers,
    double tap; X X, never considering
     Y. It`s like shooting tin cans of an alley - metallic, soulless, programmed like
     bait, goons. You feel like a vigilante, no capes or kill caps.

    Invincible. Next target found, fate, locked, loaded…Bingo - got `em.
    Bragging points gained, just another tally on the kill streak.
    Might reach the highest toll of the week. That`ll show `em.
    Headshot – cool.
    Isn`t this fun?

    Your Mum`s call for dinner is drowned out, a distant plea.
    But you promised you`d finish the mission before tea.
    You promised to come back,
    to the real world.
    You promised you`d unplug.
    But you`ve come this far, can`t have broken so many, so much, just to lose
    your kill streak.

    The sand`s spit and the fireworks of rubble and ruin become an eye sore.
    Water leaks from your bloodshot eyes, but you mustn’t flinch or falter.
    Your mouth is as dry as the superficial sand on which you play upon.
    You find a house, a shadow, and embrace it.
    But there`s a noise, footsteps. You pivot to the left.
    Nothing. You glance to the right. You blink. You die. You cry

    at the TV IT`S NOT FAIR.  You throw your weapon at the floor
    and the battery falls – dead - at your feet.
    It`s not fair. It never is.
    Now you`ve lost your kill streak.
    It`s all fun and games `till the game plays you.
    Missed out on dinner tonight, but you`ve lost your appetite.
    Why don`t you just give up the fight?

    Double Tap X has, quite ironically, a double meaning. In gun training, a `Double tap` is a shooting

    technique where 2 shots are fired in quick succession at the same target. When playing video console

    games, players must often `double tap` the `X` button on their controller in order for their character

    to fire their weapon. Of course, an `X` also symbolises death, which I feel many modern violent video

    games turn into sport.

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    Chris Johnson: March

    Snowdrops and harebells
    are emerging from
    rat-infested trenches.

    Grateful for winters armistice
    bayonets made of frost
    ice mortar shells

    can no longer harm them.
    Sunlight is arguing
    with moonlight about

    a quota of hours.
    Crows strut nonchalantly
    issuing dictatorial demands

    but only the sky
    pays attention. A hare
    rushes behind a bush -

    a streak of khaki lightening.
    Thistles and nettles –
    those bare-knuckle

    prize-fighters are flexing
    their muscles. Grass
    is growing lethargically

    as if it can't be bothered.
    The dog-winds hackles
    have subsided.

    As for February's lockjaw –
    resistant to treatment –
    a miracle has occurred,

    gradually the earth slackens.
    And a choir of thrushes
    sings a plangent requiem.

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    Phil Connolly: Following Mass

    Some of the loath-to-leave kneel on. Others throng
    the porch, or hang their chat around the yard.
    Dad’s mates’ feet are stardust down the seven steps
    and out; then blurs across the street dividing church
    and froth clinging to the sides of a glass,
    following their Tetley’s to the bottom
    while they finish on a bull, or clack their dominos
    like chuckles over tables in the Three Horse Shoes.

    Dad smacks his lips and sighs. Lame afterthought
    of years away at war, he has to wheel me home.
    Home for the guaranteed Sunday row. Home
    to his Just what the hell will the neighbours think
    of the steam that steams the kitchen windows up
    and makes him seethe and sulk through Sunday lunch.

    Thinking back, a smattering of Physics might have helped.
    I could have told him: Dad, the steam’s a must, a fact
    of warm meets cold – hot vapour hitting wintry glass.
    But I was only eight. And Mum’s teacher fell at Ypres,
    and Dad’s at the Somme. A hundred and nine,
    a hundred and ten, I see them now: She’s dishing him
    a silent Yorkshire pud. He’s simmering and boiling like the veg.

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    Jim C Wilson: Patience

    Easter again and Patience Crosbie dons
    her suit of muted tweed, double locks
    her door and steps out through the Sunday streets.
    High tenements loom and there, among black bags,
    a fox explores, bedraggled. O God of Bethel,
    by whose hand, she hums, as the steepled hulk
    of St Stephen’s soars up into view. Her fingers
    exercise inside her gloves, safe, protected
    from the morning’s chill. She’s saddened by litter
    in the churchyard but manages a smile, almost,
    on seeing Mr Chalmers. The church is cold;
    it echoes as she ascends the steps once more
    and seats herself before the organ. Time!
    Behind her, voices undulate as she picks
    out perfect notes and chords to accompany
    His death, His resurrection. There is a green hill
    far away and Patience Crosbie peers
    into her mirror, observes the congregation
    singing – mothers, fathers, the old and young.
    And soon it’s nearly over. The rustling
    of coats and the shuffling of feet on cold
    flagstones. So now she pulls out all the stops.
    Handel’s Royal Fireworks Music explodes
    from every organ pipe: celebration,
    vibration, and just a touch of exultation.
    Then she closes the lid, clicks off a switch
    and quietly descends the steps. Some words of thanks
    from Mr Chalmers as she walks down the aisle;
    then home, the long way, through the local park.

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    Carla Scarano: Good Friday

     I was surprised to see you at church
    on Good Friday,
    the day of betrayal and killing,
    when we kiss the naked body on the cross
    and cry for all our losses.
    You were there with your deaf mother,
    I was there with mine and her elderly friends.
    We quickly caught up fifteen years,
    my move to England, the new job,
    my son’s wedding, graduations,
    my father’s death and my mum living happily.
    You were just the same, unmarried,
    helping old relatives
    organizing their lives and yours,
    travelling alone mostly,
    your sister pulling out.
    Everything looked under control,
    neat words ordering a life.

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***

    Andrew Shields: Saint Jerome In His Study
    	Antonello da Messina

    The peacock and the partridge are
    	not on speaking terms.
    They both ignore the auguries
    	of other passing birds.

    The lion waits around a corner
    	to be healed again.
    From his paw, the blood is ink,
    	and the thorn a pen.

    My patron saint can trace the words
    	of a long-lost age.
    My patron saint sees nothing else
    	as he turns the page.

    He does not see the sunlit arches
    	or the aimless birds.
    All he can see is his open book
    	of miraculous words.

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***

    Gordon Wood: In this game
    (after Paul Cézanne’s paintings of card players)
    For David at eighty

    A fall of cards, like Mallarmé’s throw of dice,
    will not abolish chance; but in this game,
    when the mistral screams its eldritch song
    from nor’-nor’-west across the hunkered land,
    these clay-pipe chewing, weathered men will sit
    like rocks resisting the curling crash of waves
    and seek a pattern in the spume of cards.

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    Marjory Woodfield: Landscape
    After the painting, ‘Cape Cod Morning’, by Edward Hopper, 1950

    like a bird
    she watches long grass
    catch the sun

    among taut shadows
    just one arrow
    will reach the mark

    she counts the mornings
    remembers
    the son who doesn't know his father

    sleeps in the bed he shaped
    from forest saplings
    the horizon draws her eyes.

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    David Cooke: Johann Becher (1635 –1682)

    Although in his day he was closer than most
    to understanding combustion,
    he is known now as a man
    of simple beliefs. One: that the world
    is ruled by fools and two:
    that he had been born to fleece them.

    In the wake of a war
    that proved his thesis he ducked
    and dived and bluffed his way
    across a crazed empire. Soft-soaping
    Electors in Mainz and Bavaria,
    he gained the ear of the Emperor.

    Embroidering truth, his visionary
    logic always tipped the scales
    any time investors required
    the next good thing: his silkworks
    that prospered until he decided to bail,
    abandoning his plans
    for the Austro-Dutch Canal,
    and a comprehensive grammar
    of the lingo he’d invented.

    On the move again, he headed north,
    where the Hollanders doubted
    – all too briefly – that sand
    can change to gold
    if it’s primed with silver.

    And as they stared, transfixed,
    along their dismal coastline,
    they never guessed the cleverest
    part of the trick, when the maestro
    and their money
    vanished into mist.

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    Val Richards: Banned

    The  ever youthful soul
    Still beats its wings
    Yet dare not soar
    To one who
    All unknowing calls.
    For the world would cry,
    ‘See that sad old thing
    Mounting her broomstick -
    How sick is that?’
    Ought  I then abstain,
    Shut out my soul’s refrain,
    And stick to sweeping floors?
    This watered-down self, oh world,
    Is all you’ve seen of me.
    But I shall roar such things
    That empty chapel by the sea,
    The waves, the gulls,
    The wind singing through the high grass
    And

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***

    Ruth Valentine: Toxic Shock

    Anaphylaxis is your soul refusing
    what the world spikes into it, your throat swelling
    to stop the words getting out, the groan that’s fine,
    the whine no problem.  When I say soul I don’t
    mean anything immortal, disparaging
    the busy lavender.  If you happen to be allergic
    to bee-stings maybe you think it’s frivolous
    to grab one as metaphor.   If you’ve been forced to take
    jeers or cocks or numbing medication,
    you’ll know how your skin incinerates, your mind
    and all your mouths close.  Above the rose-garden,
    the willow shelter, the picnic-bench, the playground,
    a house-martin cries like a frightened child, a seagull
    dives, almost stabs it, spirals, swoops again.

    Ruth Valentine: The Back Wall

    Horseshoes in a cleft in the stone wall,
    a cliff, a falling away of sense and shelter,
    a line of iron outlines, rust and hole,
    as if a clatter of animals, a shire,
    a Shetland, an Arab stallion, had galloped on
    but left a token, a task, to the long-gone
    cottagers, for their well to be brimming over.

    A hidden wall, among willowherb and fern,
    at the back of the house, under bent guttering,
    ashamed of its rough-cut ragstone and the course
    of plain red brick, the corrugated iron,

    though a mirror gives back time and something yellow
    falters before it, girl in a sun-worn dress
    twirling into the centuries between
    the door and the rock-garden, and a tortoiseshell
    butterfly pauses to watch, and warms the steps.

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    Alex Josephy: Post Office, County Cork

    Above the counter, flat caps
    in a choice of felt or tweed.
    Nailed to a rafter, ragged
    round the rims, they look
    defeated, more like trophies
    from some hunt or raid
    on neighbouring homesteads
    or that pirate clan from Baltimore.
    No, those are not for sale.

    Shelves hold fly-blown boxes
    whose contents, itemised
    in blue felt-tip, speak
    of a quiet transformation
    from everyday need
    to curation: hair pins, silk hose,
    children’s woollen vests,
    slowly becoming history.

    The bar attracts more trade,
    longer-lingering, louder
    than the postal business end,
    payments and pensions
    happily getting liquidated.
    Will I pour you one?
    Beyond the glow of fairylights,
    darker shelves. Liver salts.
    Bull drench. Guess what these are?
    OK, I’ll tell you. Pig ring pincers.
    Ha! Not quite what you were thinking?

    And tightly crammed into a recess
    over the fridge where cans
    of ordinary Coke are cooling,
    a carton labelled ‘Habits’.
    That’s where he keeps the shrouds.
    That was when I suspected blarney
    so she fetched them down
    to show me: fine black cotton,
    tassled, embroidered. Sacred heart
    of Jesus, have mercy on me.

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    Hilary Hares: Psalm for the City

    A thought for those who live
    behind the bars of pinstriped suits.

    A curse on those who manufacture
    ceiling glass or raise the bar.

    A prayer for those whose rise and fall
    depends on rise and fall.

    May the goalposts never move.  May
    the scribes and minute-takers have it all.

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    James Fountain: The Catch of Commerce

    The leafy cabinets of English scenes
    slot together like forgotten dreams.

    Slender conifers sway on distant hillsides,
    curlews soar, calls rising ever higher.

    In the city, people teem from glass blocks
    oblivious to the frivolity of financial gain.

    Swayed by the rhythm beaten on a drum,
    attempting to win to show they know the score.

    The land by the shoreline has been bought
    already, developers prepare to begin building.

    As embattled fishermen land empty-handed,
    the roar of cars from the commuter’s road

    reminds them of a new catch.

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    Paul Waring: Unfinished

    A table-top canvas
    	half-eaten dishes
    knives and forks askew
    	lip-prints on glasses
    wine no longer breathing
    	a room
    where silence feeds
    	inhales   exhales

    days when every passing train
    	might be the one
    carrying you
    	and elsewhere
    is a place
    	out of reach
    and what’s left waits
    	like Laika in space

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    Nicky Phillips: Finsbury Park

    Breathless from taking the spiral staircase
    two by two, I struggle onto the platform,
    stop. Night sits around me, weighs me down
    as empty seats and bulging bins look on.

    November’s wind invades each
    hiding place, drags shreds of paper
    and cast out coffee cups into
    a swirl, leaves no space safe.

    Sirens stab the lateness, punctuate
    the background buzz and beat
    of those who never sleep.
    I wonder who’s done what, to whom.

    An express races through without
    warning, as the button pusher
    of station announcements turns
    in bed, dreams of dandelions and gin.

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    Paul Stephenson: Banisters

    I began to lose my children
    playing hide-and-seek,
    that close August afternoon
    they never found me
    or James and his stutter
    inside the sycamore trunk.

    And so I went on losing them
    – one boy, one girl,
    getting changed for five-a-side
    and placed in defence,
    cornered at the Leavers’ Disco
    on the first bars of Lady in Red.

    They were verging on lost
    when I lay with Madonna,
    Last night I dreamt of San Pedro…
    and gone for good
    come the Saturday job
    selling wills, assured tenancies.

    Years on I find them – almost,
    usually at weekends,
    clinging to banisters
    with just-cleaned teeth,
    growing as they watch me eat,
    in homes of mortgaged friends.

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    Norbert Hirschhorn: Visitations

    ...at each beginning of each new beginning –
    school, job, retreat by the sea – he fell in love.
    Always with the same person: solemn, thin,
    no makeup, a way of brushing back a strand
    that made him nearly cry with longing.

    They’d walk along a corniche holding hands —
    something about her hand he could
    detect even in the dark – or through woods,
    or through galleries, scarcely speaking.

    And then – she vanished.  Gone.  Gone.

    He looked for her in all the cherished places.
    Perhaps he saw her, or thought he saw her,
    threading the crowd off Piccadilly, or across
    a square in Siena, and he’d wave, or maybe
    tried to wave, and call out her name
    but her name choked in his throat.

    Months later, in the dark, she appeared
    at the foot of his bed. An avatar.
    Dear heart, what happened?  I’ll do whatever it takes.
    She only smiled, touched his wrist, turned away.

    		Who are you?  he whispered.
    		How did I ever come to know you?

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    Carolyn Oulton: The Visit

    This is a privilege only allowed
    to age. Was he good in bed?
    (the one so awful
    I didn’t stay in touch).

    I don’t know why you’re laughing.
    You said yourself, you’re 80 plus,
    bad knee, and I’ve brought you
    up a cliffside in a storm like this.

    When I come again
    the colour of the sea
    will have shifted.
    Gulls jumping, chalk whiter.

    I want to see my father
    as he was that day.
    Some nutter scattering
    luggage down the gangplank.

    The sea is getting dark.
    My mother will be waiting
    in the car, overplayed the radio
    and run the battery down.

    She won’t ask
    where we’ve been.

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    Jan Hutchison: Five Ways of Parting

    Also the bee frozen to the stalk of fennel
    was midway on a journey
                             *
     the morning when you left
    the click of your shoes down the path
    was ahead of the sound of yourself
                              *
     in a cathedral of memories
    each braid of your honey-coloured hair
    is a flying buttress
                              *
     slippery ground in the backyard
    corners tighten on the sheets
    I clipped astringency to the clothes-line
                               *
     today the wind blows through the grapevine
    and lifts stems off the fence
    their leaves are rough-toothed platters

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    Mary Franklin: Ross

    The English language grants us words
    to mask emotions, I say.
    I cannot find a way
    to alleviate her anxiety
    as she struggles to describe
    the vacuum of dread that engulfs her
    now her husband is dead.

    Gone is her usual joie de vivre
    though a quiet dignity remains.
    Life isn’t fair and Ross was only thirty-six,
    she says in the house with many windows
    through which thick evergreens peer,
    the house they shared together
    these last two years.

    I sense him everywhere here –
    his spirit pervades the atmosphere.
    He wanders out to the garage
    to check his two motorbikes.
    They stand soundless and still,
    engines and gears in mourning
    under their covers of grey.

    The English language grants us words
    to mask emotions, I say once more.
    I am at a loss to explain
    why he suffered so much pain
    or why he died so young
    while the tulips he planted
    bloom beside the back door.

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    Stuart Pickford: Guillotine

    I bump into Jane sorting worksheets,
    ask how she’s doing. For a second, nothing.
    Then she slices sheets in two. The bell
    is about to go. As if losing my brother
    wasn’t bad enough, Dad’s got Alzheimer’s.

    Another worksheet identical to the last.
    Thing is—she lines up the paper—our dad
    doesn’t remember Pete’s dead. The cut
    is perfect. Each time we said, he grieved
    afresh so the doctor advised us to lie.

    When he asks, we make up holidays
    for Pete, his cricket scores, the walk
    up Snowdon on his thirtieth. We’ve created
    a fine dead life. And Dad’s happy.
    Her eyes fill until there are only tears.

    Jane taps and stacks the sheets into a pad,
    monologues to practise for the mock exam.
    She brushes herself down, rigs a smile
    and sets off to teach, starting each lesson
    with Write the date in the top corner.

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    Cath Drake: A Respectable Life

    It's not easy these days in a fully-functioning modern flat.
    Back when we were students, there was a crumbling hole
    right through the lounge room wall into the kitchen where
    random notes were left from a mysterious guy called Alan,
    a sensitive serial apologist with an intense anger problem.

    It's not easy in the quiet: just me, the radio, the clock.
    No Vince with his excessive coat-tails, pockets of poetry
    and noisy Ramones obsession, or Rach with her husky howl
    and strapped-on beaten-up guitar, or Joe’s gravelly ramble
    telling bogus stories on late night talk-back radio.

    No Brownlow brothers with a philosophical dilemma
    and a pile of tinnies appearing in the lounge, or Lizzie's ex,
    who was never really her ex, face pressed to her window
    singing vodka versions of Eternal Flame at three in the morning.
    It's not easy always being able to buy what you need

    without interruption or subterfuge, days flowing like milk.
    No anticipation of the end-of-week market specials stew,
    Vince in Rach's polka dot bikini stirring, while she arranges
    the bottle top collection blu-tacked to the wall and muses on
    which hangovers are at The Pig & Hound sharing special chips.

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    Sue Wallace-Shaddad: The Kiss

    A virgin in Paris, she met the lovers
    for the first time that afternoon
    in the Musée de l’Orangerie.

    Stone cold white, curved marble
    approximation of flesh,
    two heads fused into one

    the frisson of their embrace
    astounded
    her sixteen year-old self.

    She viewed the couple
    from every direction, noting
    the book set aside

    the muscled torso
    the sweep
    of skin.

    She could not imagine
    being so impassioned –
    clothes shed –

    and wondered
    at the intimacy
    of their gesture

    Fifty years later
    she saw the lovers again
    still beguiling

    just the same –
    she sat down
    to catch her breath.

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    Susan Utting: Subjunctive Mood, Venice

    Were I to go back to the city alone,
    take it back to my own heart, I would stop
    in a square by late-night moonshine, listen
    to the waiters going home, their full throttle
    vibrato harmonies. And one of them would
    kiss the air with his fingertips, bellissima!
    and I would answer quietly, with conviction
    bravo, bravo, beautiful! And I would turn

    and go, harmonising in my head, humming
    myself down side street after square and alley
    till I saw a lighted window that was strange
    to me, but that I knew was where I’d find
    what I was there for, this time, on my own;
    that this was where I’d stay.

    Susan Utting: Transitional Object

    The tin of grips has a shiny black lid
    with a pattern of tiny red dots at one end
    and Sally in red at its centre. I love
    the tin of grips because of its slippery
    slide-open lid, it makes me think of
    a school pencil box with a lid that slides
    open, and shuts to a seamless flat surface.
    A first school, double pencil box that
    swings its opened-up top to an underneath
    hollow for more pencils or crayons, but not
    for ballpoint pens, which haven’t been
    invented yet, and when they are will
    not be allowed.
    		 The tin of grips is not
    a double anything: not a double-decker
    bus, double-breasted suit, not a double
    choc chip ice-cream; it is single, flat,
    shiny, easy-open easy-close, just as
    perfect as it should be, with its neatly
    packed grips inside, cushion tips laid
    top to tail, snug as sardines in a tin,
    this tin that sweetly slides open
    without need of a ring-pull or key.

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    Rosemary Norman: Objets Trouvés

    Objects are not lost in Lille
    but found, most often

    on trains, and are collected
    under a sign that means

    art work in English, maybe
    it’s a wine rack or urinal

    but it’s certainly umbrellas
    if the weather improves,

    left to themselves in sharp
    light to unroll the work

    that waits in them, a ballet
    of skirts on spokes flung

    in the air over Flandres and
    Europe stations, passing

    in and out of Belgium until
    anyone who saw all this

    is shaken off and only then
    they rest back on a seat.

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    Elizabeth Smither:  Skeleton, shop mannequin

    I’d like to have one of each:
    the plastic skeleton I shook
    hands with when the surgeon left the room
    a mannequin carried fireman’s hoist through the street.

    I’d have them both in the same room
    the white plaster mannequin with feet
    fastened to a base, the skeleton
    since it can dance, dangling

    by the open window whose net curtain
    threatens to clothe it in the lightest bandage.
    I’d dress the mannequin differently for each season
    and for the skeleton I’d buy a hat

    and a black bow tie with polka dots.
    One wired and flexible hand could hold a cane.
    Where would they go for a date
    for the skeleton to play Grand Guignol

    the mannequin to sip a martini
    wearing yards of scarves and furs, opera
    gloves and a jewelled cigarette holder?
    At the end of the evening they would embrace

    as he saw her into a taxi and got in
    himself, into the back seat. ‘I don’t
    take bones,’ the taxi driver would say.
    ‘You need flesh first,’ the mannequin would say.

    Elizabeth Smither writes: I am very fond of shop mannequins and skeletons such as you see in a doctor’s

    consulting room. We had a skeleton in our science class who lived inside a cupboard; I can’t remember

    her name, but she seemed part of the class.

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    Clifford Liles: A Seamstress Considers Her Options

    The trap awaits outside. Its horse, a bay,
    jangling its traces by dank stone walls.
    With her income gone, life has spun away
    like moon-bright shillings dropped down a well.

    Before a mirror and peonies, red
    as her nightmares, she begins her theatre
    of poisons: gathers her powdered white lead;
    and black moon-shaped patches of taffeta.

    She mouths a humid oath then covers her scars;
    touches rouge to her lips, feeling the pink sting.
    There. Ready, she thinks (but her shaking marks
    the proximity of panic and skin),
    for the lamp-lit stage; the candle-lit trysts.
    For the age-old trap that men can’t resist

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Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English).His poetry has appeared in such magazines as Stand Journal, The Lake,Otoliths Magazine, and Hawai’i Review, among others. He is also the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry. Balaz lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, near Bristol, where he writes poetry and short fiction. His first two collections Communing (2016) and We Are All Lucky (2018), are published by Indigo Dreams, while a third, Hi-Viz, is due out in 2020. He founded and edited the Clear Poetry webzine between 2015-2017. Ben blogs at https://benbanyard.wordpress.com and Tweets @bbanyard

Jack Collard is a First Year A-Levels student at Bridgwater and Taunton College, Somerset. He is studying English Literature and is interested in looking at the ordinary as extraordinary, and how life`s subtleties can be substantial.

Phil Connolly is married and lives near York. He taught for many years in North Africa and the Middle East. He was shortlisted in the Wordsworth Trust Competition and has been published in several anthologies and magazines including The North and Dream Catcher.

David Cooke’s poems and reviews have been widely published in the UK, Ireland and beyond. He has published six collections of poetry, the most recent being Reel to Reel ( Dempsey & Windle. 2019). Staring at a Hoopoe, his seventh, will also be published by Dempsey & Windle early next year. He is the founding editor of The High Window, a quarterly online journal of poetry and translations

Tim Cunningham has had seven collections of poetry published since 2001; his eighth, Passports, is due out in April 2020 with Revival Press. Tim has recently returned to live in Ireland, having previously worked in education in London, Delaware and Essex. He was awarded a Patrick Kavanagh fellowship in 2012.

Brian Docherty is part of a growing community of writers, artists and musicians in East Sussex. He has published six collections, most recently Only in St. Leonards: A Year on the Marina.

Cath Drake, an Australian from Perth who lives in London, has been published in anthologies and literary magazines in UK, Australia and US, and performs her work widely. She has been short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Prize, and was second in the 2017 Resurgence Poetry School eco-poetry prize (now called Ginkgo) and highly commended in 2019. Sleeping with Rivers won a Mslexia/Seren poetry pamphlet prize and was a Poetry Book Society choice. The Shaking City, her first full collection, is out in 2020 with Seren Books. Her work has included environmental writing, award-winning journalism and teaching mindfulness. http://cathdrake.com/

James Fountain was born 1979 in Hartlepool and has had two pamphlets accepted for publication so far – Glaciation (Poetry International, 2010) and The Last Stop (original plus press, 2018, Runner-Up at Ilkley Literature Festival Pamphlet Competition 2018). Has had individual poems published in The Journal, The Recusant and Dream Catcher. Wrote the first PhD on Scottish modernist poem Joseph Macleod (1903-84, University of Glasgow 2010). He is based in Leeds and teaches English in Saudi Arabia.

Mary Franklin’s poems have appeared in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies including Bonnie’s Crew, Ink Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Grip, Nine Muses Poetry, The Stare’s Nest and Three Drops from a Cauldron. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Hilary Hares’ poems have found homes online, in print and in anthologies. She has a Poetry MA from MMU and has achieved success in a number of competitions. Her collection, A Butterfly Lands on the Moon supports Loose Muse, Winchester and Red Queen is forthcoming from Marble Poetry in 2020.

Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero,” and proud to follow in the tradition of physician-poets. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has published five collections, the most recent, Stone. Bread. Salt. He is a co-translator with Syrian physician-poet Fouad M. Fouad of the latter’s poems.. A bilingual collection will be launched later in 2020. See his website, www.bertzpoet.com.

Glenn Hubbard has lived in Madrid since 1987. He began writing in 2012 and some years later was delighted to discover that people seemed to enjoy his work. He has had over sixty poems published in magazines. To be able to write poetry is a blessing

Jan Hutchison is a New Zealander and now lives in Auckland. Her most recent collection of poems is Kinds of Hunger. Her interests include forests and bio-diversity and learning the Maori language.

Teoti Jardine of M?ori, Irish, and Scottish bones, lives with his dog Amie in Aparima/ Riverton, on beautiful southern coast of New Zealand. His poetry has often found a home with London Grip. This poem was previously published in Catalyst Volume 16, 2019.

Alex Josephy lives in London and Italy. Her pamphlet Other Blackbirds was published by Cinnamon Press in 2016 and her collection White Roads by Paekakariki Press in 2018. Her poems have won awards such as the McLellan Prize and the Battered Moons Prize, and have appeared in magazines and anthologies in England and Italy. She is currently working on a second collection.

Chris Johnson has poems published or forthcoming in Orbis, Other Poetry, Interpreter’s House, The Journal, Agenda and Acumen. He is a regular visitor to the Reading Poetry Cafe

Clifford Liles was twice Highly Commended at Winchester Writers’ Festival, won the Sandwich Arts Week Local Poet and Canterbury Art in the Underpass competitions. He has been shortlisted at the Canterbury Festival. His works appear in The Cannon’s Mouth, Reach Poetry, Writers’ Forum and Canterbury Festival and Sandwich Arts Week anthologies.

Rosemary Norman was born in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. Shoestring Press published her third collection, For example, in 2016. With video artist Stuart Pound, she makes films with poems as image, soundtrack and sometimes both. See them on Vimeo

Carolyn Oulton’s previous publications include: Acumen, Artemis, Dream Catcher, The Frogmore Papers, Ink Sweat & Tears, Orbis, The Poetry Village, The Moth and Seventh Quarry. Her most recent collection Accidental Fruit is published by Worple Press.

Nicky Phillips has had poems published in Eunoia Review, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Picaroon, Snakeskin, SOUTH, South Bank Poetry, The Cannon’s Mouth and elsewhere. Her pamphlet Jam in Aisle 3 was published by Dempsey & Windle in 2018.

Stuart Pickford works as a teacher in a comprehensive school in Harrogate. His latest book is Swimming with Jellyfish published by smith/doorstop.

Frederick Pollack is author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure (Story Line Press, 1986; to be reissued by Red Hen Press) and Happiness (Story Line Press, 1998), and two collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, 2018). In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Manhattan Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Main Street Rag, Miramar, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Poetry Quarterly Review, Magma (UK), Neon (UK), Orbis (UK), Armarolla, December, and elsewhere. Online, his poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Diagram, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Big Pond Rumours (Canada), Misfit, and elsewhere.

Val Richards (1935 – 2019), was a teacher, psychoanalyst, artist and poet, who resided in North London. She deeply touched the lives of many with her entirely individual ways of seeing, her compassion, her welcoming smile, her warmth, her intuition, her loving gentleness and her wisdom. As well as writing poetry , she wrote a book (first published in 2005) on the subject of playing and interpretation in psychotherapy and theatre: The Who You Dream Yourself

Carla Scarano D’Antonio obtained her Degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. She self-published a poetry pamphlet, A Winding Road, and is working on a PhD on Margaret Atwood at the University of Reading. She and Keith Lander won the first prize of the Dryden Translation Competition 2016 with translations of Eugenio Montale’s poems. http://carlascarano.blogspot.com/ http://www.carlascaranod.co.uk/

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His collection of poems Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong”was published by Eyewear in 2015. His band Human Shields released the album Somebody’s Hometown in 2015 and the EP Défense de jouer in 2016. Twitter: @ShieldsAndrew Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrewshieldspoems/

Elizabeth Smither’s latest poetry collection, Night Horse, won the Ockham poetry prize in 2018. She also writes short stories and novels; her latest novel, Loving Sylvie was published by Allen & Unwin in 2019

Jock Stein is a piper and preacher from East Lothian. He knows how ‘joined up’ the world is, and suggests that the Australian bush fires remind us of our past links with the continent as well as indicating climate change. Most of his books are available at https://buy.sanctusmedia.com/store/collections/handsel-press-store.

Paul Stephenson has published three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016) and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He co-curated Poetry in Aldeburgh in 2018-19 and interviews poets at paulstep.com.

Tanner’s new collection Shop Talk: Poems For Shop Workers was published by Penniless Press this Halloween. Of himself he says “Tanner congealed in Liverpool tomorrow. He’s been hounding lit mags for donkeys. His star sign is Libido. Hobbies include pillage and colouring in.”

Susan Utting’s poems have been published in The Times, TLS, Forward Book of Poetry, The Poetry Review, Poems on the Underground, and broadcast at London’s South Bank Centre for Poetry International. Her fourth, latest poetry collection is Half the Human Race: New & Selected Poems,(Two Rivers Press).

Ruth Valentine’s recent publications include A Grenfell Alphabet (self-published in aid of the Grenfell Tower fund) and Downpour (Smokestack). She lives in Tottenham, North London.

Sue Wallace-Shaddad has had poems published by London Grip, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Poetry Space, Brittle Star,The French Literary Review as well as featuring in several anthologies. Sue is studying the MA in Writing Poetry (Newcastle University/Poetry School, London) and is Secretary of Suffolk Poetry Society.

Paul Waring’s poems have been published in many journals and online magazines. He was awarded second place in the 2019 Yaffle Prize and commended in the 2019 Welshpool Poetry Competition. Quotidian’ his debut pamphlet, is published by Yaffle Press.

Jim C Wilson’s writing has been widely published for nearly 40 years. His most recent poetry collection is Come Close and Listen (Greenwich Exchange). After teaching his Poetry in Practice classes at Edinburgh University since 1994, he is continuing to do so at the Scottish Poetry Library. More information at www.jimcwilson.com

Gordon Wood is a retired teacher of German and lecturer at a College of Education. Now lives near Edinburgh. Enjoyed fourteen years as a freelance contributor to the BBC German Service. Has completed a sequence of poems on John Dowland – it has not cheered him up

Marjory Woodfield has appeared in Raven Chronicles, Mudlark, Flash Frontier, takah? and others. She won the 2018/19 Dunedin Burns Poetry Competition, and was commended in the 2019 Hippocrates Poetry Award and Proverse Poetry Prize. She has been anthologised in in Pale Fire (Frogmore Press, 2019), Best Small Fictions 2019, (Sonder Press) and with one eye on the cows (Bath Flash Fiction Volume Four). Much of the inspiration for her writing comes from living in the Middle East.

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